I wouldn't knock stuff by Alienware. You pay more, but the quality is pretty good.
Nevertheless, I'd still get my next laptop through Falcon Northwest. I've bought their desktops, and again...you pay more, but you get the best.
I replaced my old Toshiba laptop recently and got a Macbook Pro 17". Went Mac because I plan to do some iPhone and iPad programming and if I need to I can run Bootcamp to run PC stuff on it as well.
Still, I dream of getting a Falcon Northwest laptop painted IBM just like my PC I got from them